Season 1 Episode 4: Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die

Everyone knows that one of the great pleasures of L&O is that it's 90 percent predictable. The set up, the characters, the lulling rhythm, the music. They're all old friends, and the occasional plot twist or guest star help keep you engaged when you're watching an all-night marathon through a bout of insomnia on a cross-country JetBlue red eye.

So the first season has been a surprise. Because it turns out that the show dealt very directly with hot political and social issues like racism in the justice system and AIDS activism. Of course, L&O still incorporates headlines news into the story lines--the more sensational, the better (I'm expecting Sarah Palin's forthcoming grandchild to take a star turn any new episode now). But the first season feels more confrontational, more as if it had been trying to challenge viewers.

Naturally, now that we're 18 years into the L&O franchise, its repeated qualities loom large in a way they couldn't have at week four. Still, I get the feeling they were trying to do something different back in the day, and I wonder if what made it successful at first was different from what's helped it endure.

Ok, enough of that bullshit. Here's what's important about episode four, which has shades of a preppy murder theme and deals vaguely with class issues (at one point, an earnest character calls her Pennsylvania hometown "the Greenwich of Scranton;" for you Northern Californians, that's like calling Sebastopol the Palo Alto of Santa Rosa).

First, early in the show, the detectives visit an apartment that the interstitial tells us is located at 533 East 66th Street. Nevermind that there's no 500 block of East 66th Street, it's the very same address--with a different interior--visited by the cops in episode 3! Even more egregious, when they walk out of the building, it's clearly marked as number 49. Ba dum!

After leaving that sector of the Matrix, they visit a bar at 708 West 86th Street. Which, if it existed, would be in a neighborhood of Weehawken.

But best of all was this gem. When the detectives visit a suspect at his apartment, he's showing it to prospective buyers. The couple gets ruffled by the intrusion, causing the suspect/seller to hiss at the cops, "Look what you've done! Do you know how soft the coop market is?"

I got nostalgic for New York in a whole new way.

(New York, 1990. Home of the soft coop market. Photo by Cisc1970.)

Comments

[m.thew]

Is this the show (or shows, isn't it a kind of multiverse?) that has the guy who people on the street say looks like me? I don't see the resemblance, but I've had strangers come up to me over the years and ask me if I'm him. I say, yes, and they thank me for my work and express sympathy for the loss of one of my balls. I thank them for being such good fans, because we can't do it without them, and make a special effort (a handshake, a pat on the back, a long, hot kiss, depending on the age, sex, and speed of the stranger) to let them know they've really connected with me with their concern for my health. Lastly, I suggest, since we're on the issue of health, that they might want to consider getting their eyes checked out.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

I prefer to think of Sebastopol as the Atherton of Santa Rosa.

[Sarah]

M, I'm guessing people think you're Richard Belzer (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001938/), who plays Detective John Munch. He's 20 years older than you are, but you have similar cheek bones.

Anyway, he doesn't appear in the show until 1996 (and doesn't become a regular until 1999, when he joins the cast of SVU), so we won't be getting to him for a *while*. Just learned, however, that he appeared from 1993 to 1999 as Det. John Munch in "Homicide: Life on the Street," a Baltimore-based cop show, which, thank god, has nothing to do with L&O.

[Sarah]

Adam, you've nailed it. Utterly.

[Tony Stubblebine]

Sarah, I hate to break it to you, but there are a number of crossover episodes with Homicide so we may need to add that to our list.

[Sarah]

T: Crap.

[Lee]

Thats a quick start. Nice work.

[Nate]

Munch also gets a cameo on the last season of The Wire. So maybe after you guys "blawg" Law & Order and Homicide you can do The Wire.

[Tony Stubblebine]

Nate: just when we think we're making a dent we find more shows we need to watch. It's brutal.